Billy Wilder's 'Double Indemnity' was one of the earlier films noir. The photography by John Seitz helped develop the noir style of sharp-edged shadows and shots, strange angles and lonely Edward Hopper settings. It's the right fit for the hard urban atmosphere and dialogue created by Cain, Chandler, and the other writers Edmund Wilson called 'the boys in the back room'. [Roger Ebert, December 20, 1998.]

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Cinematographer and frequent Billy Wilder collaborator John F. Seitz plays the expressionistic, low-key lighting that defines noir to the hilt, wrapping the illicit lovers in moody pitch-darkness, throwing silhouettes of Venetian blinds against the walls like prison bars, and making the shadow of MacMurray's Walter Neff loom over his actual body like a projection of his sin-blackened soul. Pure and simple, 'Double Indemnity' just looks like a film noir, a true textbook example. It's a film that oozes attitude from its opening shot to its indelible close, and the way Wilder and Seitz use externalized visuals to illustrate their characters' warped internal psychology is sublime. [From the blogcritics.org website.]

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The look of the film was equally influential. The high contrast cinematography which defined Noir goes back to the Expressionist era but John Seitz's work as DP on this film brought it right into the mainstream of Hollywood. He repeated the trick in films such as 'The Lost Weekend', 'The Big Clock' and, most brilliantly in that mix of Noir and poisoned nostalgia 'Sunset Boulevard', but his career then dribbled away into low-budget programmers and he doesn't seem to have gained the same reputation among Noir enthusiasts as John Alton. [Mike Sutton on the DVDTimes website.]